Making a boat

Over the last few days, Jack has been quite interested in attaching, wrapping and threading, mainly outside. Whether it's skipping ropes, blankets, string or rope. Today he found this long pink tape. I'm not sure whether he asked someone to tie the bucket onto it earlier, but when I observed Jack's play this afternoon the bucket was attached to one end.

Jack began by threading the loose end through the small hole in the green climbing box, then out the big arch. He pulled it over to the little tree and wrapped it around a few times. I was standing close, observing Jack's play as well as helping some children across the planks. 'Look Ainslee, look', Jack yelled out to me. 'Cool Jack', I said, 'what are you making?'. 'Making a boat Ainslee', Jack replied.

He continued on, revisiting where he had looped the tape through to see how much he had left. Jack even tried to wrap himself in the tape, and onto the tree, but he changed his mind when he started to run out of spare tape. He kept tugging on it, close to the green box. As he did this, it pulled the tied bucket further up the green box. It could only go so far, because the hole wasn't big enough to let the bucket through. Jack kept tugging for a while, trying to figure out why it wouldn't work. He looked at me, as if I might be able to make it go through. 'The bucket is too big to fit in the hole Jack', I said. Jack looked at it again and agreed. He then went back to the tree and continued to wrap what tape he had left around anything he could see.

Children develop the ability to make decision, choose their own materials and set their own problems (Exploration, Te Whariki).

Children develop a perception of themselves as 'explorers' - competent, confident learners who ask questions and make discoveries'.

Ainslee